Quote: @"MarkSP18" said:
@"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
Pretty high
One year in and they won the division. KAM and KOC will or at least should get better at decision making. I was honestly surprised by some of the cuts made this past offseason. Hard decisions will be made and I think KAM can make them. I don’t think there is a reason to think he wouldn’t want to put the best product out there.
The Wilf family just needs to stay out of the way a little bit. I know they wanted a soft retooling instead of a complete rebuild, which I agree with. Blowing up a roster just because never made sense to me.
Pinning Donatell on KOC is fair, however you have to look at the big picture that is the NFL coaching tree. Sometimes coordinators want more control or freedom to do what they want, or see the personnel on a team and say, Nope!We don’t know who was talked to or who was considered besides Donatell. Maybe other coaches didn’t want to attach themselves to KOC, thinking he’s young and it could hurt their career. You never know all the details.
Depth is something that will probably be lacking for at least another year. The decisions that take place this off season will impact that. You can’t do wholesale cuts and expect to be deep.
I hope this draft goes well, I hope they fix some of the problems on the defensive side of the ball, while still trying to add weapons and good depth on the O line.
Speaking of the O line, they were good at times, and they were bad at times. But, they were better than the past and they did see some young players step up and contribute. Brandel has become a very good swing tackle IMO, and honestly Bradbury stepped up his game. They’ll need to resign or replace this offseason. Is the o line elite? No, but name the starting 5 O linemen for the 6 Super Bowls Belicheat won.
I’m good with the path the Vikings are on. We’ll see in a few years who was right.
We could both be wrong.
Well, here is the situation. The Vikings are 7.4 million OVER the projected salary cap for 2023. We have a lot of older veteran players that we will need to make decisions on. There is not a single free agent on this roster I would bring back (including Bradbury) and what do we do with Cousins moving forward, who is once again going into the final year of his contract and will be 35 years old. We drafted 10 players last year and we have no idea if any of them can play or add any sort of quality depth. We have needs along the defensive line, at linebacker, we have no idea if any of the young corners on the roster are any good so does this also become a need? Thielen likely will be a salary cut in June, so finding a starting caliber receiver somewhere that can take the double and triple teams off JJ becomes a priority. We traded off draft picks for Reagor and Hockenson.
This team has huge question marks up and down the roster and I simply do not trust this front office to make the right decisions when the right decision was to blow this thing up last offseason. I would have gladly taken a 5-12 season this year with Baker Mayfield at the helm (per say), salary cap room, extra draft picks, and a top 5 draft pick heading into next season. Instead, we blew our wads trying to piece this together with duct tape, got bounced in the first round of the playoffs, and once again have to address the same problems and issues as last offseason.
The Vikings are actually 24.551M over according to overthecap.
Several players have updated salaries. Ezra Cleveland is at $2,995,000 up from $1,365,076, Cameron Dantzler at up $2,745,000 from $1,154,000, DJ Wonnum is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000, and KJ Osborn is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000. That is an extra $6,690,924.
Players on rookie contracts are eligible for an escalator mainly based on how much they play.
https://frontofficenfl.com/2020/06/04/2020-nfl-cba-explained-proven-performance-escalator-ppe-in-rookie-contracts/
Beginning with the 2018 draft class, players drafted in the second through seventh rounds are eligible to receive the Level One, Level Two or Level Three PPE.
In order to qualify for Level One, second-round picks must either (a) play 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays in any two of his first three seasons or (b) participate in a cumulative average of 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays over the course of his first three regular seasons. For third- through seventh-round picks, players can hit either (a) or (b) above, but the threshold to reach drops to 35 percent of such plays.
Also, there were some practice squad players added to get to 51. Tay Gowan at $940,000, William Kwenkeu at $870,000, Trishton Jackson at $870,000, Nick Muse at $870,000, and Kalon Barnes at $870,000 for a total of $4,420,000.
All together the extra is $11,110,924.
The team is in a tight spot.
Potential cuts/trades with savings
Eric Kendrick - 9.5M
Jordan Hicks - 5M
Adam Thielen - 6.4M
Harrison Smith - 7.4M
Dalvin Cook - 7.9M
CJ Ham - 3M
Chris Reed - 2.5M
Za'Darius Smith - 13.6M
If they moved on from these players they save 55.4M and would have 30.9M in cap space.
They could restructure 12M of O'Neill's salary and get an extra 9M.
They could give Hockenson a 4 yr 58M deal with nice signing bonus and save 5M.
They can extend Tomlinson and NOT have it change his 7.5M cap hit that is already there at all.
They would have 44.9M available with these moves without touching Cousins deal which they should not.
Give JJ a 5 year 165M deal with a 40M signing bonus and it costs 8M in cap space.
That takes the available space down to 36.9M.
All they have left after that is to decide if they want to extend or trade Hunter. I wonder if Seattle would give up #20 plus a 2024 (3rd or 4th) for Hunter?
I'm not sure they should extend Bradbury with the strong center class in the draft. Plus, it could take 10M apy or more.
I would target Germaine Pratt LB and Cameron Sutton CB in free agency.
Good to see you Mark. I posted a thread with a simplistic 3rd party take on the cap from Luke Braun. I liked the moves he proposed overall, but it does not give us enough money to sign JJ AND uograde the D much. pribs will be a cut that we dont like, or knowing KAM, a trade for draft capital.
Quote: @"MarkSP18" said:
@"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
Pretty high
One year in and they won the division. KAM and KOC will or at least should get better at decision making. I was honestly surprised by some of the cuts made this past offseason. Hard decisions will be made and I think KAM can make them. I don’t think there is a reason to think he wouldn’t want to put the best product out there.
The Wilf family just needs to stay out of the way a little bit. I know they wanted a soft retooling instead of a complete rebuild, which I agree with. Blowing up a roster just because never made sense to me.
Pinning Donatell on KOC is fair, however you have to look at the big picture that is the NFL coaching tree. Sometimes coordinators want more control or freedom to do what they want, or see the personnel on a team and say, Nope!We don’t know who was talked to or who was considered besides Donatell. Maybe other coaches didn’t want to attach themselves to KOC, thinking he’s young and it could hurt their career. You never know all the details.
Depth is something that will probably be lacking for at least another year. The decisions that take place this off season will impact that. You can’t do wholesale cuts and expect to be deep.
I hope this draft goes well, I hope they fix some of the problems on the defensive side of the ball, while still trying to add weapons and good depth on the O line.
Speaking of the O line, they were good at times, and they were bad at times. But, they were better than the past and they did see some young players step up and contribute. Brandel has become a very good swing tackle IMO, and honestly Bradbury stepped up his game. They’ll need to resign or replace this offseason. Is the o line elite? No, but name the starting 5 O linemen for the 6 Super Bowls Belicheat won.
I’m good with the path the Vikings are on. We’ll see in a few years who was right.
We could both be wrong.
Well, here is the situation. The Vikings are 7.4 million OVER the projected salary cap for 2023. We have a lot of older veteran players that we will need to make decisions on. There is not a single free agent on this roster I would bring back (including Bradbury) and what do we do with Cousins moving forward, who is once again going into the final year of his contract and will be 35 years old. We drafted 10 players last year and we have no idea if any of them can play or add any sort of quality depth. We have needs along the defensive line, at linebacker, we have no idea if any of the young corners on the roster are any good so does this also become a need? Thielen likely will be a salary cut in June, so finding a starting caliber receiver somewhere that can take the double and triple teams off JJ becomes a priority. We traded off draft picks for Reagor and Hockenson.
This team has huge question marks up and down the roster and I simply do not trust this front office to make the right decisions when the right decision was to blow this thing up last offseason. I would have gladly taken a 5-12 season this year with Baker Mayfield at the helm (per say), salary cap room, extra draft picks, and a top 5 draft pick heading into next season. Instead, we blew our wads trying to piece this together with duct tape, got bounced in the first round of the playoffs, and once again have to address the same problems and issues as last offseason.
The Vikings are actually 24.551M over according to overthecap.
Several players have updated salaries. Ezra Cleveland is at $2,995,000 up from $1,365,076, Cameron Dantzler at up $2,745,000 from $1,154,000, DJ Wonnum is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000, and KJ Osborn is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000. That is an extra $6,690,924.
Players on rookie contracts are eligible for an escalator mainly based on how much they play.
https://frontofficenfl.com/2020/06/04/2020-nfl-cba-explained-proven-performance-escalator-ppe-in-rookie-contracts/
Beginning with the 2018 draft class, players drafted in the second through seventh rounds are eligible to receive the Level One, Level Two or Level Three PPE.
In order to qualify for Level One, second-round picks must either (a) play 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays in any two of his first three seasons or (b) participate in a cumulative average of 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays over the course of his first three regular seasons. For third- through seventh-round picks, players can hit either (a) or (b) above, but the threshold to reach drops to 35 percent of such plays.
Also, there were some practice squad players added to get to 51. Tay Gowan at $940,000, William Kwenkeu at $870,000, Trishton Jackson at $870,000, Nick Muse at $870,000, and Kalon Barnes at $870,000 for a total of $4,420,000.
All together the extra is $11,110,924.
The team is in a tight spot.
Potential cuts/trades with savings
Eric Kendrick - 9.5M
Jordan Hicks - 5M
Adam Thielen - 6.4M
Harrison Smith - 7.4M
Dalvin Cook - 7.9M
CJ Ham - 3M
Chris Reed - 2.5M
Za'Darius Smith - 13.6M
If they moved on from these players they save 55.4M and would have 30.9M in cap space.
They could restructure 12M of O'Neill's salary and get an extra 9M.
They could give Hockenson a 4 yr 58M deal with nice signing bonus and save 5M.
They can extend Tomlinson and NOT have it change his 7.5M cap hit that is already there at all.
They would have 44.9M available with these moves without touching Cousins deal which they should not.
Give JJ a 5 year 165M deal with a 40M signing bonus and it costs 8M in cap space.
That takes the available space down to 36.9M.
All they have left after that is to decide if they want to extend or trade Hunter. I wonder if Seattle would give up #20 plus a 2024 (3rd or 4th) for Hunter?
I'm not sure they should extend Bradbury with the strong center class in the draft. Plus, it could take 10M apy or more.
I would target Germaine Pratt LB and Cameron Sutton CB in free agency.
IMO you end up cutting all those guys, then its white flag time and the rebuild is on. At that point we might as well trade Cousins for whatever we can get because we likely aren't really competitive next season and what's the point in having a 35 year old QB who we continue signing to short term, big money deals? I'm personally for a full rebuild because I think its inevitable and its time to pay the piper from the Zimmer/Spielman window of opportunity. I thought it should have been done last offseason. I just don't know that the Wilfs would ever sign off on it although it needs to be done.
Mark, nice work on your post. Despite the hole we are in, it's exciting to imagine what can be done by selling what we have that team's value, or restructuring the players we want to keep to create cap space. Not just enough to get under the cap, but a sizable amount to fill holes in Free Agency.
Supafreak, as you alluded to, I don't see the Wilfs agreeing to a tear down/rebuild. I definitely think there would be a market for a Cousin's Trade, but I just don't see that happening. After what KOC did in his first year, they will be a glass half full organization that will desperately try to make another run next year. We are never going to suck enough to get an elite mobile QB at the top of the draft. Unless by shear luck a Brock Purdy type falls into our laps, I think Cousins is the best chance we have while we still have Jefferson under contract. I would extend him for two years and lower his cap number for 2023 so we can free up some money to fill holes on defense, deploy a more effective scheme, and put forth a respectable defensive effort to go along with our #8 Offense.
Do I have confidence in the organization... well assuming we are talking about current ownership, who have had it for 18 years, the answer would be no.
The ceiling appears to be a playoff appearance about once every 3 years with a coinflip chance of winning one game. But the talk from headquarters has consistently been 'we want championships.' The talk and actions don't match up. The fans mostly believe because the ownership builds buildings and tries to maintain a sort of "Cadillac" franchise appearance. Unfortunately, while it shines up everything around TCO and US Bank Stadium, it never has a trophy to shine up because the thing it doesn't build is a title contending football team.
I'm not sure they care as long as the revenue rolls in, and their p.r. happy talk doesn't do much for me. Actions speak louder than words and they have let very average managers and coaches run their franchise for a long time. But KOC/KAM are still relatively shiny and new so we'll see, they have a chance to do what others haven't for 18 years since Wilf bought the team - actually win something more than the July Offseason Beauty Contest that the Wilfs seem to think constitutes success.
Quote: @"MarkSP18" said:
@"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
Pretty high
One year in and they won the division. KAM and KOC will or at least should get better at decision making. I was honestly surprised by some of the cuts made this past offseason. Hard decisions will be made and I think KAM can make them. I don’t think there is a reason to think he wouldn’t want to put the best product out there.
The Wilf family just needs to stay out of the way a little bit. I know they wanted a soft retooling instead of a complete rebuild, which I agree with. Blowing up a roster just because never made sense to me.
Pinning Donatell on KOC is fair, however you have to look at the big picture that is the NFL coaching tree. Sometimes coordinators want more control or freedom to do what they want, or see the personnel on a team and say, Nope!We don’t know who was talked to or who was considered besides Donatell. Maybe other coaches didn’t want to attach themselves to KOC, thinking he’s young and it could hurt their career. You never know all the details.
Depth is something that will probably be lacking for at least another year. The decisions that take place this off season will impact that. You can’t do wholesale cuts and expect to be deep.
I hope this draft goes well, I hope they fix some of the problems on the defensive side of the ball, while still trying to add weapons and good depth on the O line.
Speaking of the O line, they were good at times, and they were bad at times. But, they were better than the past and they did see some young players step up and contribute. Brandel has become a very good swing tackle IMO, and honestly Bradbury stepped up his game. They’ll need to resign or replace this offseason. Is the o line elite? No, but name the starting 5 O linemen for the 6 Super Bowls Belicheat won.
I’m good with the path the Vikings are on. We’ll see in a few years who was right.
We could both be wrong.
Well, here is the situation. The Vikings are 7.4 million OVER the projected salary cap for 2023. We have a lot of older veteran players that we will need to make decisions on. There is not a single free agent on this roster I would bring back (including Bradbury) and what do we do with Cousins moving forward, who is once again going into the final year of his contract and will be 35 years old. We drafted 10 players last year and we have no idea if any of them can play or add any sort of quality depth. We have needs along the defensive line, at linebacker, we have no idea if any of the young corners on the roster are any good so does this also become a need? Thielen likely will be a salary cut in June, so finding a starting caliber receiver somewhere that can take the double and triple teams off JJ becomes a priority. We traded off draft picks for Reagor and Hockenson.
This team has huge question marks up and down the roster and I simply do not trust this front office to make the right decisions when the right decision was to blow this thing up last offseason. I would have gladly taken a 5-12 season this year with Baker Mayfield at the helm (per say), salary cap room, extra draft picks, and a top 5 draft pick heading into next season. Instead, we blew our wads trying to piece this together with duct tape, got bounced in the first round of the playoffs, and once again have to address the same problems and issues as last offseason.
The Vikings are actually 24.551M over according to overthecap.
Several players have updated salaries. Ezra Cleveland is at $2,995,000 up from $1,365,076, Cameron Dantzler at up $2,745,000 from $1,154,000, DJ Wonnum is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000, and KJ Osborn is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000. That is an extra $6,690,924.
Players on rookie contracts are eligible for an escalator mainly based on how much they play.
https://frontofficenfl.com/2020/06/04/2020-nfl-cba-explained-proven-performance-escalator-ppe-in-rookie-contracts/
Beginning with the 2018 draft class, players drafted in the second through seventh rounds are eligible to receive the Level One, Level Two or Level Three PPE.
In order to qualify for Level One, second-round picks must either (a) play 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays in any two of his first three seasons or (b) participate in a cumulative average of 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays over the course of his first three regular seasons. For third- through seventh-round picks, players can hit either (a) or (b) above, but the threshold to reach drops to 35 percent of such plays.
Also, there were some practice squad players added to get to 51. Tay Gowan at $940,000, William Kwenkeu at $870,000, Trishton Jackson at $870,000, Nick Muse at $870,000, and Kalon Barnes at $870,000 for a total of $4,420,000.
All together the extra is $11,110,924.
The team is in a tight spot.
Potential cuts/trades with savings
Eric Kendrick - 9.5M
Jordan Hicks - 5M
Adam Thielen - 6.4M
Harrison Smith - 7.4M
Dalvin Cook - 7.9M
CJ Ham - 3M
Chris Reed - 2.5M
Za'Darius Smith - 13.6M
If they moved on from these players they save 55.4M and would have 30.9M in cap space.
They could restructure 12M of O'Neill's salary and get an extra 9M.
They could give Hockenson a 4 yr 58M deal with nice signing bonus and save 5M.
They can extend Tomlinson and NOT have it change his 7.5M cap hit that is already there at all.
They would have 44.9M available with these moves without touching Cousins deal which they should not.
Give JJ a 5 year 165M deal with a 40M signing bonus and it costs 8M in cap space.
That takes the available space down to 36.9M.
All they have left after that is to decide if they want to extend or trade Hunter. I wonder if Seattle would give up #20 plus a 2024 (3rd or 4th) for Hunter?
I'm not sure they should extend Bradbury with the strong center class in the draft. Plus, it could take 10M apy or more.
I would target Germaine Pratt LB and Cameron Sutton CB in free agency.
Hey, this is good stuff. I agree with most everything you have here with a few exceptions. I would restructure Harrison Smith instead of cut him. I think we'll need him back considering the uncertainty surrounding Cine. Same with Z.
Another place to find money is Cousins. You could extend him and find another 10 or 15.
I don't think you can trade Hunter without tearing the whole thing apart (which isn't out of the question). He's the cornerstone.
I'm torn on Bradbury. Love the idea of continuity for the line, but I think we'd want to give him a short term deal (that ends before Darrisaw is due), and I'm guessing he'll get a longer term offer somewhere else. God knows who we'd replace him with.
After one of the worst drafts in franchise history and one of the worst defensive coordinators without any changes my confidence is right here;
I'm pushing all my chips to the center of the table, get in if you want, in 2023 this team is not going to the playoffs.
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